The Geomancer

10/25/16

A perfect tale for Halloween

Posted by
Lisa Kay

Halloween is almost here, and there's nothing better than a supernatural story to get you in the mood! If you crave something other than witches and vampires and werewolves (oh my!) then Barbara Barnett's debut The Apothecary's Curse might be just what you're looking for. Rene Sears, editorial director of Pyr, recently chatted with Barbara about her writing style and inspiration behind this tale of the true price of immortality. Read on for more!

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The lives of two men become entwined for centuries after an apothecary creates an elixir from an ancient manuscript. Physician Simon Bell and apothecary Gaelan Erceldoune are able to conceal their immortality, but the only hope for reversing their condition rests with the now missing manuscript. When a modern-day pharmaceutical company unearths diaries that could lead them to the fabled "elixir of life," Simon and Gaelan must race to find the manuscript before their secret is discovered.

Rene Sears: I
love the way the story in The Apothecary's Curse weaves through two timelines.
What led you to such a that structure rather than a more linear timeline?

Barbara Barnett: My original road map told the story in a much more
straightforward linear narrative. But as I wrote, two things happened. One, I
realized I had to either do a very long time jump from 1842 to the modern-day
story or fill in the story of the intervening years more fully, which would
have led to quite a different (and much longer) novel than I desired. Second,
as I developed the relationship between Gaelan and Anne Shawe, I began to see
parallels with his Victorian-era story and I wanted to really explore that. So
rather than keep it linear, I thought it would be much more interesting to
integrate the two storylines, revealing both simultaneously.

In the book, a
geneticist speculates about human immortality in relation to Turritopsis
dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish. How did you come to be interested in the
jellyfish, and how did it relate to the genesis of some of your ideas for this
book?

I knew I didn’t want the immorality to be explainable only by
some sort of magic event. That would never do for my skeptical hero Gaelan
Erceldoune! He would say that all magic is simply science we did not yet understand,
so I had to find science that might explain his immortality.

My undergrad studies were in biology and chemistry, and I
have always been fascinated with genetics. So when I came across the 2009 Nobel
Prize-winning research on the “immortal” jellyfish and its telomeres, I thought
I’d hit on something that could play very well in my story. How can the
jellyfish be immortal? Its extraordinarily sturdy telomeres (the chromosome end-caps,
more or less) keep the keep the chromosomes from deteriorating and the
jellyfish from aging. So, my fictional geneticist’s research is based upon the
Nobel work and fueled by her family’s genetic history.

What goes into your
writing process, and do you outlines before you write or discover as you go?
Apothercary's Curse has such wonderful mood and atmosphere; I also wondered if
you write to music, and if so, do you have a playlist for the book?

I tend to write road maps rather than hard and fast outlines.
I keep in mind the classic “three-act” structure and put bullet points just
under the chapter headings so I know where I want to go by the time I’ve gotten
through a chapter. Beyond that, I really like the journey of discovery along
with my characters. I started The
Apothecary’s Curse with a fairly detailed road map, and then my characters
took on a mind of their own, but even so, every time I got stuck or lost in the
journey, my outline guided me back to where I wanted to be, at least in broad
strokes.

As far as writing to music goes, I’m a professional singer,
and when I have music in the background, I get distracted and listen to the
music. So I generally do not listen to music while writing. However, I was listening to music when I wrote the
Simon’s first scene visiting Bedlam. I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem, and when I went back to
re-read, I was stunned by the sheer number of musical metaphors that had found
their way into that scene!

The
scenes in Bedlam seem really appropriate this close to Halloween! We'd love to
know any scary details you came across about Bedlam in the course of your
research.

Bedlam was in itself a scary place—especially for the poor
wretches sent there. I thought it was interesting that in the pre-psychiatry
days, the doctors treating mental illness were called mad doctors. Apothecary’s “mad doctor” really is a mad doctor. So many of the treatments
used there would now be considered extreme torture, and if a person wasn’t
insane when admitted to Bedlam, he or she surely would be in short order.
Horrendous experimentation on patients was common as were “freak shows” not
unlike to which Gaelan was subjected. Many died at the hands of Bedlam’s mad
doctors and were buried in mass graves on the grounds.

And finally,
particularly as you have written extensively and analytically about television
shows, I'd like to hear what shows you're watching. :)

My favorite shows right now are Game of Thrones on HBO, Poldark
(season two is upon us!) on PBS, Man in
the High Castle on Amazon (I’m a huge Philip K. Dick fan, and I adore
alternate history stories). The newest one on my screen is Designated Survivor with Kiefer Sutherland. I was not a big fan of 24, but I really liked the first episode
a lot.

I watch Once Upon a
Time, though not as intensely as I did during its first couple of seasons.
I adore the mashups of fairy tale and mythology, and I liked their original
take on Rumplestiltskin (yes, it’s spelled that way on the show!), especially
as portrayed by Robert Carlyle (who would make a fantastic Gaelan Erceldoune,
by the way!) but I think the show’s gotten a bit away from the original concept
over the last two seasons, but I’ll keep watching and hoping.

I’m a politics junkie, so cable news is often my writing
white noise, while Real Time with Bill
Mahler and Last Week Tonight with
John Oliver (both on HBO) are appointment TV for me.